This invention relates to a barrier for small boats. More particularly, the invention is to a cost effective floating barrier for small boats that is cast from low density concrete.
Marine facilities including ships are vulnerable to sabotage by explosive laden small boats. Different access-obstructing structures have been placed on the water with varying degrees of effectiveness.
One floating structure has a series of elongate, voluminous hollow water pipes sealed at their ends that are strung across an access way. Additional hollow pipes are welded to and across them for added buoyancy and to stabilize a partitioned wall held above the water that hopefully deters, or deflects encroaching small boats. This ponderous pipe structure requires a time consuming fabrication procedure at a distant heavy construction site and a significant and further time consuming logistical effort to get it to the water and launched. The time spent could leave a waterway unprotected during a critical period.
Another floating wall structure that floats on the water's surface uses interconnected thin-walled shells, or pontoon-like cylinders that may be rigid metal or inflatable flexible bags. While these cylinders may be easier to deploy on the surface of the water than the hollow water pipe structures, their fabrication can be labor and time intensive. Their construction suggests they might not survive the long-term rigorous effects an corrosion of waves, tides, and the other operational abuses they will be routinely subjected to, and consequently may need frequent inspection and maintenance.
A modification of the interconnected pontoon-like cylinder design has an upwardly extending metal framework supporting an exposed net that extends from one end to the other. In addition to requiring increased maintenance, the additional framework and net further complicate fabrication, and the extra time spent might delay deployment and leave a marine facility unprotected.
Thus, in accordance with this inventive concept, a need has been recognized in the state of the art for a cost effective, low maintenance easily fabricated barrier for deterring small boats from marine facilities.